Thank you for subscribing!
Turning Point UK president Marco Longhi writes for GB News on the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death
During my time as President of Turning Point UK, a role I held until my election defeat as an MP in 2024, I watched closely what he built in America and the pull he had, especially among young people.
Charlie didn't restrict himself to friendly audiences; the opposite is true.
He walked onto university campuses, stood in front of people who fundamentally disagreed with him, and asked them to make their case.
If you thought he was wrong, his message was simple: say so, argue it out, try to change his mind.
Political debate has grown more hostile by the year. Increasingly, people would rather stop an opinion being heard at all than actually beat it in argument.
Speakers get cancelled, meetings get disrupted, and people face pressure the moment someone takes offence at what they've said.
Once we decide that silencing someone is an acceptable response to an opinion we dislike, we've started down a genuinely dangerous path: Charlie paid for that path with his life.
Whatever anyone made of his politics, nobody deserves to be killed for what they believed, or for being willing to say it out loud in public.
Behind the politics and the movement he built sits a smaller, harder story.
He left behind his wife, Erika, two young children, parents, friends and colleagues, all of whom now carry a loss no family should have to face.
As this anniversary lands, my thoughts are with them most of all.
I hope it offers them some comfort that his work outlived him.
The organisation he founded is still running, and plenty of the young people he pulled into politics are still finding their footing in it.
That, to me, is the part worth remembering: how he lived his political life, placing himself in the middle of disagreement and making his case anyway.
